EDITORIAL
Every year, in the frenzied weeks leading up to Christmas, we find ourselves thinking how easy it would be to get cynical about this holiday.
Then along comes Christmas Day and all our icy pragmatism melts away in the warmth of the holiday spirit.
Call us rank sentimentalists, but just waking up on the morning of Dec. 25 has a special feel to it. In our younger days, it may have been the anticipation of gifts under the tree. Now, it’s more a sense of the stillness in the air the calming, soothing inner peace we get from knowing that virtually everything’s closed today, the streets and offices and stores are all empty and there’s nothing to divert us from the comforts of hearth and home.
Throw in a dusting of snow, a little frost on the windows and a roaring fire behind that hearth and, presto … all the diversions that threatened to turn us into hard-hearted Scrooges as Christmas was approaching suddenly disappear like so much smoke up the chimney.
It’s those diversions, of course, that imperil our festive disposition from the moment Santa Claus arrives at Macy’s on Thanksgiving morning, marking the official start of the Christmas season. (Actually, that’s when the Christmas season used to begin; nowadays, we start getting junk mail for holiday gifts sometime in August, the Christmas catalogues arrive in September and the decorations start going up in the stores before Halloween. Heck, we know people who have finished their Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving.)
Then, as Christmas approaches, the pressure mounts to buy the right gift, to leave the right tip, to survive the office party without making a fool of yourself. Then there’s all that work that isn’t getting done at the office because you’re off buying gifts, leaving tips and attending all those parties.
And let’s face it: There are only so many times you can hear "Jingle Bell Rock" before you realize there’s a reason you never heard another song by Bobby Helms. (For that matter, there are only so many times you can hear "Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree" before you remember why you never bought an album by Brenda Lee. And there are only so many times you can hear the Chipmunks sing "Christmas, Christmas time is here" without going stark-raving mad!)
How many Santa Clauses can you encounter before you want to grab one of them by the costumed beard and yank it off? How many candy canes can you eat before you remember that you don’t even like them?
But that’s all over now. It’s finally Christmas, and there’s no mail and no Musak and no candy canes today unless you really want one.
Part of what makes Christmas Day so special is all the hype leading up to it. For those who love the shopping and the baking and the caroling and the partying the kind of people who sing along with Bobby Helms, Brenda Lee and the Chipmunks it’s the most wonderful time of the year (oops, wrong song). For others, who grow more curmudgeonly under the relentless onslaught of yuletide sentiment, it’s the merciful end to a period of unmitigated commercialism.
On Christmas Day, we all celebrate.
For Christians, the celebration of this day carries special religious significance. For the followers of other faiths, and even for those with no faith at all, the Christmas story should be no less compelling. For its central theme the wish for peace on earth, good will toward men strikes a resonant chord in all of us. This year in particular, it is a powerful message that bears not only universal applicability but a renewed sense of urgency.
Whether we mark the occasion by giving prayers or giving gifts, with rejoicing or with relief, we all share for at least this single day a common bond of fellowship and humanity.
Merry Christmas.